By Amber Marra
tribune correspondent

KEYSER — With the selection of West Virginia University’s next president set to be announced on Friday,  members of the Potomac State College community are setting high expectations for the new administrator.
PSC is a branch campus of WVU, along with the WVU Institute of Technology. Kerry Odell, the provost at PSC of WVU, has said that the attribute he will look for in the new president will be an awareness of the significance of PSC to WVU’s main campus.
“Part of the reason PSC is important to WVU is that many students transfer to the Morgantown campus after a year or two and I would like (the new president) to recognize that these are high quality students,” Odell said.
According to the WVU presidential search Website, the WVU Board of Governors and presidential search committee are looking for a president who has integrity, leadership, experience, scholarship and vision.
Odell says he would also like a president who will continue to enhance PSC’s campus and science facilities that have not been renovated since their construction in the 1950s.
This could be done with the aid of the new president and the main campus, such as when the new 352-person residence hall was built, a task that Odell says could not have been done without the help of WVU.
“The labs are in good shape, they’re just getting very old and we need to think about a new science building or renovating those labs we use to teach chemistry and biology,” he said. “And I would hope
the new president would see the need to help us find ways to do that.”
Renovations to the Lough Gymnasium would be another improvement to PSC’s campus that Odell says he would like to see. The gymnasium was built in the 1920s and has not been renovated since then.
Though this is an issue that needs to be addressed, Drew Brubaker, the student body president at PSC, says he does not think the new president will be able to attend to it in the near future.
Regardless of the lack of a new gym, Brubaker says it is more important for the new president to be as involved with the students, faculty and staff at PSU as possible.
“I would like to see a president who is responsive to faculty and students, after all, that is the very people he or she will be serving. The willingness to answer to his or her constituencies is important,” Brubaker said.
Currently, Interim President C. Peter Magrath and Provost E. Jane Martin oversee the administrative duties of WVU, PSC and WVU Institute of Technology. Interim President Magrath took the place of former president Michael S. Garrison after he stepped down as of Sept. 1.
The two candidates for the next president are James P. Clements, provost of Towson University, the second largest university in Maryland, and Gregory H. Williams, president of The City College of New York.
On-campus open forums from both candidates will be held for the multiple constituencies of the University today and Thursday.
The new president will be selected by the BOG on Friday,  after they have met with both candidates separately during a special meeting. He will take office as of July 1, 2009.
The final decision will be approved by the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission.